Our vision is to be the leading community-based support charity in Scotland.
SupportED is an established and expanding eating disorders pro-recovery Scottish charity. We have a growing geographical reach and work in communities across Scotland to support people with an eating disorder, their families and carers.
Our History
- The charity was set up in 2014 by her family in memory of Linda Tremble, who sadly lost her battle with anorexia nervosa in 2011. Since 2019 we have expanded to become Scotland’s leading community eating disorder charity.
- In 2020 we took the decision to rebrand as SupportED to better reflect the work of the charity, encompassing specific areas of support within the community to anyone affected by an eating disorder.
- Annually, we support over 120 people in 6 Health Board areas, and this is growing every year.
Our Purpose
To ensure that all those affected by eating disorders throughout Scotland have easy access within their communities to the services they need to enable improvement in their wellbeing and support their journey towards recovery.
To achieve this, we work to develop and provide a growing number of high-quality non-clinical services.
Our Strategic Plan
Our Strategic Plan over the next 5 years, will therefore:
- Grow our staff and volunteer teams to enable us to support more service users
- Develop and deliver more person-centred and accessible support services that achieve positive outcomes and give hope for recovery – in each of the 16 Health Board Areas across Scotland.
Our Business and Development Plan will outline how we plan to achieve these objectives by 2027. This will include a detailed operating plan for year 1, and a higher level timeline for years 2-5 to meet our Strategic Plan.
Aim 1
Increase our visibility and improve our accessibility for potential service users through effective marketing.
- Develop and deliver a communications and marketing strategy
- Develop resources that are easily understandable and encourage self-referral
- Seek opportunities to raise awareness locally and nationall
- Increase the number of people accessing our services
Aim 2
Engage, enable and empower all those affected by eating disorders in our areas of service provision.
- Continue to improve the quality and effectiveness of our services
- Ensure we fully understand the demographic breakdown and the different needs of our communities of place and interest
- Ensure our staff and volunteers have the expertise and understanding to effectively respond to these needs
- Develop monitoring and outcomes data to evidence our impact on our service users lives and well being
Aim 3
Continue to improve the quality and effectiveness of our services
- Explore national relationships with eating disorder organisations to share learning and effective responses
- Build effective partnerships with NHS eating disorder services
- Develop an effective, targeted fundraising strategy
- Ensure regular engagement and consultation with Advisory Group and other stakeholders
Aim 4
To provide high quality volunteering opportunities for students, people interested in eating disorder support and people with lived experience of eating disorders
- Develop a Volunteer Strategy and Policy that reflects the value of our volunteers
- Improve the volunteering experience through recruitment, training and opportunities for Continuing Professional Development (CPD)
- Retention of volunteers through regular and effective supportand supervision
- Increase volunteer applications from more diverse andmarginalised communities
Strategic Aims 2022/27
To support these aims and objectives over the next 5 years we will further develop and implement:
- Fundraising Strategy
- Communications and Marketing Strategy
- Business and Development Plan
Identifying Our Aims
We held a Strategy Stakeholder Event on 8th February 2022 where we invited all of our stakeholders to attend an online consultation and workshop to help identify and shape our aims for a new 5 year Strategy for SupportED Scotland. We also invited those who were unable to attend to fill in a stakeholder survey to ensure the widest possible stakeholder reach.
The results show that our vision and mission were appropriate for the organisation and reflective of the services we currently provide.
Our vision
To be the leading community-based eating disorder support charity in Scotland improving the health and well-being of people experiencing eating disorders and their families, through the provision of community-based and other support, awareness raising, information and training.
Our mission
All those experiencing an eating disorder, their families and carers have information, support and connections in their own communities, in the ways that suit them best, to support their mental and physical health and wellbeing and aid their journey to recovery.
Going forward however, we want to be clear about our ambitions and how we can work together to meet the needs of our current and future service users.
A SWOT analysis gave us the additional information we needed to identify our Aims for the next 5 years and the results of the Stakeholders survey and round table discussion helped us set SMART objectives for each aim.
Our Values and Beliefs
Supportive
We will provide support in a caring, confidential, understanding and non-judgmental manner. We will treat everyone with respect and recognise success. Our volunteers, staff and trustees will all work together as a team with everyone who would like our support.
Accessible
We will help people where it is most needed, at the heart of the community. We will ensure that our services are open and accessible to all who require our help. We will work in close partnership with others across the whole community of eating disorder expertise to maximise support and effectiveness.
Inclusive
We are non-judgmental and know it takes people with different ideas, strengths, interests, and cultural backgrounds to make our charity succeed. We welcome everyone and encourage healthy debate and different opinions.
Dedicated
Dedication and commitment are at the very heart of our charity. Our volunteers, staff and trustees are all passionate about recovery from eating disorders and strive to improve and achieve the best in all that we do.
Professional
We will act with integrity and do what is right in all our dealings with others. We will be open, honest, ethical and transparent and strive to achieve and maintain best practice governance and organisational systems. We will have professionally trained teams to ensure our on-going sustainability, effectiveness and impact. We will stay informed on policy through regular interaction with our network.
Clinical Positioning
This includes those showing early signs of disordered eating behaviours, those who do not wish to access NHS treatment or those with disordered eating who are suffering distress as a result of their behaviours or are struggling with body image issues.
We are currently working with NHS services to improve referral pathways to our services and our Advisory Group, which meets quarterly, supports us with this work.
As a Charity we provide non clinical support but we work closely with NHS Eating Disorder Services for Adults over 18 years old who are best positioned to work with those who are seriously ill or in crisis and have the appropriate multi-disciplinary approach.
At SupportED we recognise that people affected by eating disorders can also benefit from a range of non clinical support which aims to provide empathy, understanding and peer support within their own communities, before, during or after clinical support and treatment.
